If you work in Ireland on a payslip, PAYE, USC and PRSI come out of every pay packet and the year seems settled. For the US it isn’t, but the news is mostly good: at Irish rates the foreign tax credit wipes out the US tax on your salary. What actually costs Americans here money is the investing everyone around you does, in Irish ETFs and pension funds, which the US tax system treats very differently.
Do I still file a US return while living in Ireland?
Yes, every year your gross worldwide income reaches the filing threshold. For 2025 that’s $15,750 if you’re single and under 65, $400 of net self-employment income, and $5 if you’re married to an Irish spouse and file separately. Income you later exclude or credit away still counts toward the threshold.
Both countries use the calendar year, so the pay and tax summary in your Revenue myAccount lines up with the 1040. The deadlines run like this:
- 1
15 April 2026: US tax payment due
From abroad you can file later, but you can’t pay later without interest.
- 2
15 June 2026: US return due for Americans abroad
Automatic if you live outside the US on 15 April. Attach a statement saying you qualify.
- 3
15 October 2026: extended US deadline, and the FBAR
File Form 4868 by 15 June to get here. The FBAR is due 15 April but extends automatically to the same date.
- 4
31 October 2026: Irish Form 11 for 2025
Along with 2026 preliminary tax. Pay and file both through ROS and the date moves to 18 November 2026.
Our US expat tax guide covers the 1040 itself. The rest of this page is what’s specific to Ireland.
Do I need to file a Form 11 in Ireland as well?
Not if all you have is one salary under PAYE. Revenue treats a PAYE employee as a chargeable person, who must file Form 11, once non-PAYE income reaches €5,000 net or €30,000 gross. Self-employed people and company directors file every year.
Americans cross that line more often than they expect. Dividends from the US brokerage account you never closed, rent from a condo back home, a deemed disposal on an ETF, or freelance work on the side all count. If you’re Irish-domiciled, that US income is taxable in Ireland whether or not you bring it in.
How much does Ireland take, and what can I credit?
Income tax is 20% up to the standard-rate band and 40% above it. You then subtract tax credits (in 2025, €2,000 personal and €2,000 for PAYE employees, or an earned income credit of up to €2,000 for the self-employed). On top sits the Universal Social Charge, which applies to your whole income once it’s over €13,000, and PRSI, which was 4.1% for most employees until 1 October 2025 and 4.2% after.
| 2025 | Rate | Band |
|---|---|---|
| Income tax, single | 20% / 40% | First €44,000 at 20%, the rest at 40% |
| Income tax, married (one income) | 20% / 40% | First €53,000 at 20%; up to €35,000 more for a second earner |
| USC | 0.5% | First €12,012 |
| USC | 2% | Next €15,370 |
| USC | 3% | Next €42,662 |
| USC | 8% | Everything above €70,044 |
Income tax and USC go on Form 1116. So does DIRT, the 33% the bank takes from your deposit interest. PRSI doesn’t, because the totalization agreement covers it, and Local Property Tax is neither creditable nor, since 2018, deductible on a US return.
Foreign tax credit or FEIE: which works in Ireland?
For almost everyone on an Irish salary, we use the foreign tax credit. You’re into the 40% band at €44,000 and the 8% USC band at €70,044, so Irish tax on a Dublin salary is well above US tax on the same pay. The credit takes the US tax to zero and carries the excess forward ten years. It also leaves you able to fund a Roth IRA and claim the refundable part of the child tax credit, which the exclusion shuts off.
The foreign earned income exclusion (Form 2555) excludes up to $130,000 of 2025 foreign earnings. It rarely beats the credit here. The housing exclusion doesn’t add much either: Notice 2025-16 lists no Irish city, so Dublin uses the default limit of $39,000, and after the $20,800 base the most you can exclude for rent is $18,200.
One case to watch is SARP, the Special Assignee Relief Programme for people sent here by a foreign employer. In 2025 it takes 30% of income over €100,000 out of Irish tax. Less Irish tax means less credit, so a senior assignee on SARP with a big bonus can end up owing the IRS something after all.
Say you’re on €95,000 at a tech company in Dublin
Take Megan, a single US citizen working in Dublin, earning €95,000 in 2025, about $107,223 at the IRS rate.
Her income tax is €8,800 on the first €44,000 and €20,400 on the rest, less €4,000 of credits: €25,200. USC comes to about €3,644. That’s €28,844 of creditable Irish tax, or $32,555. She also pays about €3,919 of PRSI, which doesn’t count.
On the US side, $107,223 less the $15,750 standard deduction leaves $91,473 taxable, for about $15,040 of tax. The credit covers all of it and roughly $17,500 carries forward. The exclusion also gets her to zero, but it leaves no earned income for a Roth IRA and no carryforward. We’d file her on the credit.
Illustrative, rounded figures. A real return uses her actual pay and tax summary.
I’m not Irish-domiciled. What does that change?
Ireland taxes you as resident if you spend 183 days here in a tax year, or 280 days across this year and last (a year with 30 days or fewer doesn’t count toward that). Domicile is separate. Most Americans who move here keep a US domicile of origin for years, and a resident who isn’t Irish-domiciled pays Irish tax on foreign income and gains only when they’re remitted to Ireland. Pay for work done in Ireland is taxed in full regardless.
That’s an Irish benefit only. The IRS taxes your US dividends either way, and since Ireland never taxed them there’s nothing to credit. It costs you nothing extra, but don’t assume an item Ireland leaves alone is untaxed everywhere.
Why are Irish ETFs such a problem for Americans?
This is the biggest trap on the page. The world-index ETFs every Irish money blog recommends are domiciled in Ireland or elsewhere in the EU. For US tax, each one is a Passive Foreign Investment Company (PFIC). That means Form 8621 every year and, without an election, a sale taxed at the top US rate for every year you held it, plus an interest charge. Unit-linked funds from Irish life companies, and most funds offered by Irish brokers, have the same problem.
Ireland adds its own twist. Gains on these funds aren’t taxed as capital gains at 33% but under the exit tax regime, at 41% in 2025 and 38% from 2026 (the October 2026 Budget announced a further cut to 35% from 2027). Every eight years you hold one, Ireland treats you as having sold it and taxes the gain: the deemed disposal. The US doesn’t recognise that sale. So you pay Irish tax in year eight on a gain the IRS either hasn’t taxed yet or, if you made a mark-to-market election, taxed bit by bit in earlier years.
Say your Irish ETF hits its eighth anniversary
Take Ryan, single, who put €20,000 into an Irish-domiciled world-index ETF in June 2017. By June 2025 it’s worth €38,000. Ireland treats it as sold: €18,000 of gain at 41% is €7,380 of exit tax, about $8,330, reported on his 2025 Form 11.
Ryan made a mark-to-market election in 2017, so the IRS has been taxing the rise each year as ordinary income. His 2025 increase was about €3,000 ($3,386), which costs roughly $745 of US tax at 22%. The Irish tax covers that, and the remaining $7,585 or so goes back one year and forward ten in the passive category, where it can only be used against future foreign investment income.
Without the election it’s worse: no US tax in 2025, a large Irish payment that’s hard to use, and the PFIC default rules waiting when he finally sells. Illustrative, rounded figures.
Before you buy an Irish or EU ETF
Don’t, if you can avoid it. Hold individual shares, which are not PFICs, or keep investing through a US brokerage in US-domiciled funds. Irish tax on US-domiciled ETFs depends on whether Revenue regards them as equivalent to Irish funds, so get your Irish adviser to confirm the treatment before you buy. If you already hold Irish ETFs, get them onto Form 8621 now and decide on the mark-to-market election deliberately.
What happens to my Irish pension, PRSA or AVCs?
This is the part of Irish-American tax where the law is honestly unsettled. Irish occupational schemes, PRSAs and AVCs aren’t US-qualified plans, and the treaty doesn’t make them so for citizens. Contributions you make aren’t deductible on your 1040, and the IRS has never said whether the funds inside a PRSA are separately reportable PFICs or how an occupational scheme should be classified.
Our lean is to treat an employer’s occupational scheme as a foreign pension: vested employer contributions are generally taxable US income, growth is deferred until you draw benefits, and the plan goes on the FBAR and Form 8938. We treat a PRSA the same way but look harder at what it holds. The retirement lump sum is the piece people misjudge. Ireland lets you take up to €200,000 tax-free over your lifetime. The US doesn’t follow, so we’d expect to tax the lump sum above the contributions you already paid US tax on, with no Irish tax to credit against that first €200,000.
PRSI, US Social Security and the Irish State Pension
The US–Ireland totalization agreement, in force since 1993, stops you paying into both systems on the same wages. Work for an Irish employer and you pay PRSI, not US Social Security. A US employer sending you here for five years or less can keep you in US Social Security with a certificate of coverage. Self-employed people generally pay into the system of the country they live in, which keeps them out of US self-employment tax.
In retirement the treaty does something unusual. Article 18(1)(b) makes US Social Security paid to a resident of Ireland taxable only in Ireland, and the saving clause doesn’t override it, so a US citizen who lives only here reports it to Revenue, not the IRS. The Irish State Pension runs the other way: Ireland taxes it and so does the US, with a credit for the Irish tax.
Reporting your Irish bank accounts
If your non-US accounts together topped $10,000 at any point in 2025, you file an FBAR. In Ireland that usually means your AIB or Bank of Ireland current account, a credit union, Revolut, any brokerage or pension you control, and joint accounts with your spouse. Ireland signed a FATCA agreement with the US in 2012, so Irish banks ask for your US tax number and report your balances.
| Form | Who files | Threshold |
|---|---|---|
| FBAR (FinCEN 114) | US citizens and green-card holders | Over $10,000 combined at any time in the year |
| Form 8938 | The same people, with the 1040 | $200,000 at year end or $300,000 at any time ($400,000 / $600,000 joint) |
| Form 8621 | Anyone holding PFICs, including Irish ETFs and funds | Per fund, most years |
The FBAR guide covers how to count balances. Convert euro balances at the Treasury’s year-end rate, not the yearly average.
Selling a house or shares in Ireland
Irish capital gains tax is 33% after a €1,270 annual exemption, and gains made between January and November are due by 15 December the same year, long before your US return. The tax is creditable on the 1040. Your main home is usually exempt in Ireland, while the US exclusion stops at $250,000 of gain ($500,000 joint), and the US also taxes currency gains on paying off a euro mortgage, so a sale needs both sets of numbers.
Moving back to the US means choosing a state again. If you kept ties to California, New York or Virginia while you were away, read our state tax guide.
Behind on US filing from Ireland?
Plenty of Americans in Ireland find out late, especially people born here to a US parent and those who came on a two-year contract and stayed. If it wasn’t willful, the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures let you file three years of returns and six years of FBARs with no penalty, and on an Irish salary the tax due is usually small or nil. Our Streamlined guide explains who qualifies.
What we’d do for you
We start from your Irish pay and tax summary and any Form 11, put income tax, USC and DIRT on the credit and leave PRSI off, and list every Irish account on the FBAR. If there’s an ETF, a PRSA or a deemed disposal coming up, we’ll tell you plainly what it costs to keep and what we’d change. See expat pricing for what’s included.